Asa Kasher endorses military court conviction of two Givati soldiers, but says ‘neighbor procedure’ can sometimes save lives.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=190354Sunday’s highly publicized military court conviction of two Givati soldiers for using a Palestinian boy as a human shield should serve as an opportunity to contest the Supreme Court’s sweeping prohibition of such behavior, formally known in the IDF as “neighbor procedure,” Prof. Asa Kasher, author of the IDF’s code of ethics, said Tuesday.
“What those two soldiers did was wrong,” said Kasher in a telephone interview, endorsing the military court ruling. “But there are situations in which the use of the enemy’s civilian population to defuse a potentially explosive situation is not only ethically permissible, it also saves lives.”
In many instances of confrontation between IDF forces and a terror suspect who has barricaded him or herself inside a building, neighbors who are either family from the same clan or friends can peacefully and effectively neutralize the situation, Kasher explained.
Neighbors often have a vested interest in preventing the IDF from destroying the building where the suspect is hiding because they live in the same building; relatives or loved ones also have a desire to save the terrorist’s life, Kasher explained.